


What Is a Telescope (But a Spyglass Pointed at the Stars)

by dirtbag



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Gen, POV Outsider, Podfic Available, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtbag/pseuds/dirtbag
Summary: “Yeah," Fig says, "I just had this idea for a song about, like, this sick magical creature that flies through the stars and also maps out all their secrets, and then it turns out that the creature is super analytical and cool but maybe also tender in a way that’s not immediately apparent. You know?”“Totally,” Gorgug says, after a beat. He wonders whether or not he’s supposed to point out that Fig is pretty much describing Ayda Aguefort from the Compass Points.
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth, Figueroth Faeth & Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 12
Kudos: 113





	What Is a Telescope (But a Spyglass Pointed at the Stars)

Gorgug and Fig are about thirty minutes into an impromptu jam sesh in their suite at the Gold Gardens when Fig suddenly stops playing. 

Gorgug doesn’t really notice at first; it’s kind of taking up all his brainpower to pretend like he knows how to play more than two and a half chords on the old acoustic guitar he’d found last week in a forgotten dusty corner of the Hangvan. 

“Hey,” he registers Fig saying to him after a few seconds, jostling the ornate wooden bed frame underneath the mattress he’s sitting on with one of her boots. “Hey, Gorgug. Wanna hear something I’ve been working on?”

Gorgug looks up at her, slouched over her bass in an overstuffed armchair next to the bed. Usually when they play together she can’t stay in one place for more than a few seconds, no matter how casual the setting. “Yeah,” he says, carefully laying down the guitar, “of course.”

Fig takes a deep breath in and shrugs her braid off her shoulder, so it falls down her back. The fact that she’d bothered to introduce this new riff at all makes it seem important, so Gorgug leans back on his elbows and gets ready for Fig to shred his face off. 

She starts to play, and what comes out isn’t face-shredding at all. Instead, the sound is focused and precise, chill without being meandering— it’s easy to forget in a place as insular as the Gold Gardens, but something about the way Fig is playing reminds Gorgug all at once of the fact that they’re at sea. 

“I know I don’t usually go this ambient,” Fig says after a few seconds, defensively, fingers still moving over the strings on autopilot. 

“No, I like it,” Gorgug says. He wishes he had a pair of sticks on him, but he never did get used to the whole thing of keeping them in his back pocket. “It’s cool.”

Fig nods and kicks one boot up onto the mattress near Gorgug’s knee without any regard for the delicately-embroidered comforter. “Yeah, I just had this idea for a song about, like, this sick magical creature that flies through the stars and also maps out all their secrets, and then it turns out that the creature is super analytical and cool but maybe also tender in a way that’s not immediately apparent. You know?”

“Totally,” Gorgug says, after a beat. He wonders whether or not he’s supposed to point out that Fig is pretty much describing Ayda Aguefort from the Compass Points. 

Some of this internal struggle must show on his face, because Fig takes one look at him and flushes even darker pink than normal. Gorgug does his best to assume a casual air, the air of someone who isn’t one of Fig’s best friends and has no idea what her _i’ve-revealed-too-much_ face looks like. Judging from the way she groans and tosses her bass aside, he doesn’t do a very good job. 

“Listen,” she says. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“I won’t,” Gorgug says. Privately, he thinks it’s sort of a miracle that someone hasn’t walked in on them already, but against all odds it seems like everyone else is busy at the moment.

“Okay.” Fig takes a deep breath, holds it in for so long Gorgug starts to get concerned, then releases it all in a whoosh, muttering something indistinct as she does. 

“Uh,” says Gorgug. “I didn’t really—”

“I think I like Ayda Aguefort.” Fig’s eyes dart around the room as she says it, like she’s worried Ayda is going to fly in through a window at the mention of her name. 

“Hey, that’s awesome,” Gorgug says, because it is; Ayda had seemed cool, and Fig is definitely cool, and therefore any potential combination of the two of them has a high probability of also being cool. 

“Thanks, Gorgug, but it’s not,” Fig says, sounding beleaguered. “We’ll probably never see her again, or if we do she won’t even remember who I am, or if she does it’ll only be because of how stupid I acted in front of her.”

“Hold on,” Gorgug interjects. He sits up straight again and tries to assess how much reassuring physical contact Fig will put up with before she gets fed up with it and skateboards off. Ultimately, he just ends up tapping two of his knuckles against her shin. “It wasn’t that bad. I bet she definitely remembers you, at least.”

“No freakin’ way,” Fig says, flopping back against the armchair and squeezing her eyes shut. “All I did in front of her was eat a bunch of bird seed and pretend to be someone else.”

“You ran pretty fast when you were Rawlins,” Gorgug offers. Fig ignores this, which is fair enough. 

“I didn’t even give her a _chance_ to like me,” she says, and she sounds so sad when she says it that Gorgug feels a twist of inarticulate worry in his stomach. This is usually the point in a heart-to-heart where he’d put an arm around Fabian in spite of his protests or let Kristen ride around on his back for a while to get her mind off things, but that kind of stuff doesn’t usually work with Fig. The moments he feels closest to her tend to be more random and ephemeral, like when they’re really losing it together onstage or having brain freeze contests at Basrar’s or trying to keep each other awake at record label meetings while Gorthalax talks business. 

Gorgug realizes he’s letting the pause go on too long, which only makes him more nervous about what he should say next. “She liked me, though, remember?” he eventually settles on, thinking of the gentle feeling of Ayda’s hands on his face, her big cool fireball eyes staring right into his soul. “So even if that’s true, she’d probably still be happy if we wrote a song about her.”

Surprisingly, this thought seems to hearten Fig more than anything else he’s said so far. She sits back up and pulls her bass into her lap again, squinting off into the distance like she’s thinking hard. 

“You may have a point,” she says eventually. “As expected of the greatest wizard of our time. You think if we see her again you could maybe put in a good word for me?” 

“Sure,” Gorgug says, even though he’s pretty confident there won’t be any need. Ayda doesn’t seem like someone who’d waste her time on pointless tasks, and trying not to like Fig is probably the most pointless thing Gorgug can think of off the top of his head.

She would definitely skateboard away if he said any of that out loud, so instead Gorgug picks up the guitar. He doesn’t know enough yet to try to complement the new bassline, but he plucks at a few strings anyway. “Can I hear it one more time?”

Fig doesn’t say anything back, and Gorgug doesn’t look up from the guitar, but it only takes another moment for music to fill up the room around them.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!!!! [:o)](https://twitter.com/spectrologist)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] What Is a Telescope (But a Spyglass Pointed at the Stars)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28881546) by [ofjustimagine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofjustimagine/pseuds/ofjustimagine)




End file.
